Rainy Day Musings
by paperwingsandbrokenlegs
Summary: Just a little insight into hearts and minds of Rafe, Evelyn and Danny. Rated for language. DO review.
1. Fire and Ice

_hi!_

_Summary: Evelyn contemplates the differences between Rafe and Danny, but decides that...well, you just have to read on and see what she decides, eh? Set between the incident in the parachute hanger and Rafe's return. _

_Reviews are welcome, as is criticism, constructive or otherwise._

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Betty once called them fire and ice, and she had nodded along with the rest of the girls at what had seemed like an apt description of the two pilots. But now, now that she knows the both of them better than anyone, apart from the two of them, ever will, she's come to the realisation that that description may not be entirely true.

Rafe is her first. Sure, she's had boyfriends before, but they were nothing more than summer flings and childhood crushes. He's her first love, and what a love it was. She smiles as she remembers the way she used to sit on the beach and write letters that, upon second reading, sounded like they had been plucked from the depths of the cheesy romance novels that some girls are so fond of. Still, she meant every word and probably still does.

Danny...well, he's different. The circumstances under which they came together were hardly foreseeable and certainly not a good foundation for any relationship. Still, she loves him with a ferocity that even she did not anticipate; much like 2 clouds blown together cling desperately to one another before the same winds tear them apart once more.

But she has digressed. What brought her to the realisation that Betty was wrong? Because now, now that she knows them, she's realised that they aren't so different after all. At first glance, they do seem to be polar opposites of one another. Rafe has an easy charm and cockiness that just flows right off him. His personality fills the room, and she's sure that he's the life of any party. When she met him during the eye exam, he was all that she could see, not until Danny butted in and asked for his turn.

Like she said, she hadn't really noticed Danny at first. The first time he came to her attention was during the dance the night before Rafe left. From the moment the nurses and pilots formed one group, laughing and drinking together, he had barely said one word, choosing instead to watch his drink swirl in its glass. When the band started playing Crossroad Blues, Rafe had asked him whether now would be a good time to start dancing, probably in an attempt to strike up a conversation. His reply was a shrug and a poisonous "If you want to dance, you'd be up by now, regardless of what I think." When everyone had gotten up to dance, only Danny and Sandra were left at the table, and she watched sympathetically as her friend tried to get him to ask her to dance too. All she got from his was a nervous "Hi." At first, she wondered what Rafe saw in the morose cad, but then, later that night as Rafe kissed her goodbye, she understood his gloomy mood. Where Rafe is like a ten-piece orchestra in the middle of the room, the centre-piece of attention and subject of conversation, Danny is like a solo flute or violin, something one comes to appreciate after the round of introductions to friends of friends and meaningless chatter. They're different on the surface, like different musical instruments, but they operate based on the same principles.

Ask anyone and they will tell you that Rafe is a rebel; that he revels in flipping off the army brass. It's true. He doesn't like orders, doesn't like being told what to and when and he especially hates being told that he cannot do something. Tell him that a certain stunt is too dangerous to pull off and he'll make sure that you're watching when he does. In contrast, Danny seems like the sane one, the one with common sense enough to temper his recklessness. It takes a little while to realise that Danny isn't one for following the rules either. It's just that, like everything else about him, it takes a second, careful look to discover what he's actually doing.

Take the issue of his hair, for example. It's too long in front to comply with regulations, and she's heard his C.O. tell him off about it on more than one occasion. So, she's quite surprised when he shows her an old photo of Rafe and himself and she sees that his hair used to be shorter. When asked about it, he shrugs. Then, after a while, he says "Why does the force care about the length of pilots' hair anyway? My hair's longer than regulations allow and I can fly better than most of those buzz-cut drones. Don't see why I need to comply with meaningless rules," and she learns something new about him. He doesn't like being told what to do, like Rafe, but he just has a different way of showing it.

She's heard stories about the stunts Rafe has pulled, mostly from Danny. She knows from the way he "commandeered" the little speedboat to take her to the ship that night in New York that he's the kind who will take any risk, and get away with it most of the time. She wonders, even now, whether he was killed that way; taking a risk that, this time, didn't pay off. But she's never seen him fly, not like Danny. Sometimes, in the evenings, she goes to the base and stands quietly in a corner where no one will notice her, because that's when he likes to fly. He starts off the same, flying high up and disappearing into the clouds and she wonders what he's trying to do, or where he's trying to go, but soon enough, he comes down. Gooz has learnt not to fly in the evenings, but sometimes he can't avoid it; as soon as he takes off, Danny is there, tailing him, cutting him off when he tries to turn, flying circles around him and being a general pain in the ass. She wonders what that is all about, since she cannot detect any animosity between the two on the ground.

The girls never neglect to point out that she's twice lucky in terms of the good looks of her boys. While she always modestly points out that Gooz is well-built too, and that Red has such an interesting shade of hair, she knows that they are right. She noticed Rafe's good looks the moment she laid eyes on him; he was ruggedly handsome and he knew it. His hair was always slicked back in a Humphrey Bogart style that everyone else tries to imitate but fail to, and he has that cleft in his chin that makes him look oh-so-manly. She laughs out loud when she recalls an incident during a trip to the Coney Island pier. A young girl had been eyeing Rafe the whole time they were there, and her hat had gone flying when a particularly strong gust of wind blew through. Being the gracious southern gentleman that he was, Rafe rescued the renegade hat and returned it to the girl, who had blushed like a radish when he handed it to her. They walked away, and when Evelyn turned around to get a second glimpse of the girl, she was clutching the hat to her chest and half-dancing excitedly on the pier, a reaction she thought was reserved for the likes of Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart.

In contrast, she only noticed Danny's sheer beauty when they had coffee together after running into the each other while escaping the movie. Unlike Rafe's chiselled features, his friend's countenance is more aquiline, more delicate. His eyelashes, longer and thicker than any woman's, draw attention to his eyes; in her years of service, she has looked into the eyes of countless young men and women, but she has never seen eyes as beautiful and sad as his. She sometimes wonders which feature of his she likes best; his lithe frame, his too-long dark hair or maybe that mischievous smile that lights up his face sometimes. It seems a little unfair at times that he has the supposedly impossible beauty and brains combination, but every time that thought runs through her head she remembers the things he's lived through and quickly realises that she'll never begrudge him any of the good fortune life throws his way; he deserves every little bit of it and more besides.

Perhaps the way in which they differ was the way each responded to her. Rafe was always trying to sweep her off her feet, often with great success. He'd sourced out rare French champagne for her, taken her on picnics to the countryside, taken her on a battleship...the list was endless. And when she was standing there, marvelling in the sights and sounds and that feeling in her heart, he'd slip an arm around her, as if to say that he was the only one who could put such a sparkle in her eye. To this day, he was the only one. When they'd dance or walk, his hand would slip from her waist and slide slowly lower, and they both knew that the purpose of this was not to feel her up but so that she'd react and he could throw some smart-ass comment at her that would make them both laugh.

On the other hand, Danny constantly touches her. When she'd said that to Betty, the girl had giggled and waggled her eyebrows at Evelyn, which made her surprisingly angry because she hadn't meant it like _that_. Whenever they are together, he'd be in constant contact with her; his fingers brushing lightly against hers, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her. He likes to hug her. He likes to greet her with a kiss on the cheek. He likes to lie with his head in her lap, and once almost purred in sheer contentment when she started threading her fingers through his hair. It was then that she understood his craving for human contact. Apart from Rafe and now her, he doesn't allow anyone into his personal space. Where Rafe used to have the company slinging their arms around his shoulders, proudly boasting about their ace, the most Danny gets is a friendly pat on the back. She didn't blame them; how could anyone be comfortable with throwing their arms around a guy who never really let his guard down around them?

They also differ in the way each touched her. Rafe used to occasionally loop and arm around her waist or take her hand in his; it was all very movie-like. It felt so right, like they were somehow made for each other. It was all so movie-like, and she would shiver in anticipation waiting for him to place his hand over hers on the dinner table. Things were very different with Danny; he is what she has come to describe as a serial cuddler. Given enough time and space, he would find a position, limbs entwined with hers, that allowed him to lay his head over her heart and her to rest in the crook of his arm, that feels a lot more comfortable than it should. She loves this too, but in a different way. Whilst it was about chemistry and the thrill of the chase with Rafe, this is about the display of affection and reassurance of not-loneliness that somehow is sweet and sad at the same time.

So, yeah, they aren't quite fire and ice. They are more like difference sides of the same coin; same of opinion, but different in execution. The question in everyone's minds, which she knew even if they never asked, is who she prefers; Rafe, who she loved with wild abandon, or Danny, whom she loves with all her heart? She doesn't know, doesn't want to know, because it's like asking her which hand she likes better. No matter which one she has, there will always be a place in her heart for the other.


	2. Knowing

_Summary: The night before Rafe leaves for England, there is only one person on his mind, and it isn't Evelyn. _

_Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Pearl Harbor and this was not made for profit. _

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Rafe knows a lot about Danny. Ask him; he can tell you.

He can tell you that Danny walks around barefoot when he can, that he likes the disgustingly sweet cookies in the mess hall, that he sleeps curled into a semi-foetal position on his left side, but that's only until he falls into a deep sleep, because then he sleeps on his stomach like a goddamn starfish, long-ass legs hanging off the sides of the bed. Danny likes his coffee black, with two cubes or three spoons of sugar, and before he drinks he stares into the coffee like it's got all the answers to life's questions. He puts his right sock and shoe and before his left, every single time. He won't bend the pages of a book, something he considers sacrilegious, but he'll chew the end off every damned pen they own and he's got no problems ripping pages out of the middle of a notebook to scribble on.

Danny's got a photo of his of Mom and Dad in his wallet. Rafe hates the man because he almost single-handedly came close to breaking one of the gentlest, kindest souls the earth has been graced with. One thing that surprises him is that Danny didn't get his eyes from his Mom or Dad; maybe God himself had given him those soulful, brown orbs. One thing Rafe knows for sure; starving orphaned puppies had nothing on Danny when he had that _look._ He has one photo of Rafe, too, a silly one taken during Christmas of Rafe wearing a Santa hat, tucked into the back where they both pretend it doesn't exist because Rafe saw it once and threatened to beat the snot out of him if he didn't get rid of it. He controls the joystick with his left hand but will use two hands every now and then. He always takes food from Rafe's lunch without asking, but will wait for permission when he asks Rafe if he can borrow a pen. He likes chocolate ice-cream. More than three shots of Jack Daniels, and he's puking his guts out in the morning.

Rafe can tell you that Danny's grief is an awful, crushing thing captured in the silent shaking of his shoulders as he hunches over himself in a corner where no one can get to him. Only Rafe has ever seen him cry that way, and it makes him want to blow his brains out because he can't take that away from Danny. He can tell you that _you'll_ never see Danny cry; he wells up with tears easier than a 5 year old, but never lets them fall, stubbornly hiding his grief from anyone who'd pity him. He can tell you that when Danny laughs - really laughs, in that good-natured, dimples-in-cheeks way of his - it never fails to make Rafe laugh too. He can tell you that a truly angry Danny is terrifying, and not just because it is so difficult to imagine that someone so good-natured can beat the living daylights out of an opponent twice his size. Most of all, Rafe can tell you that Danny's smile is the best gift he can give you, because it's so full of unbridled joy and happiness that it is a pity he's too shy to smile like that more often.

Now that his Dad is gone, Rafe is the only person left who knows exactly what color his hair was at the age of 12, and the face he made the first time he got whacked by a propeller. He has a catalogue of firsts - first flight, first fall, first crush, first Spelling Bee championship, first near-disastrous stunt, first disciplinary hearing and he cannot share them, because there is no one who could be trusted with such delicate knowledge.

It is Rafe who knows the intimacy of living with Danny; that he never makes his bed; that he likes having the windows open, even at night. Rafe knows what Danny looks like blinking the sleep from his eyes and searching for his MIA toothbrush and polishing his shoes, and he knows what Danny looks like in the throes of a nightmare and how he still twitches sometimes at the clinking sound of a belt buckle. Rafe knows what it's like to wake up at night and tuck the corners of the blanket over Danny's exposed shoulders; Anthony caught him doing it once and asked if Rafe thought he was Danny's mother and got flipped off for it, but Rafe knows in his heart that he is Danny's everything; mother, father, big brother and best friend.

Rafe carries the knowledge and he doesn't feel the weight of it because he never thought about it until now; that when he leaves, and if he doesn't make it back, there won't be a person left in the world who know Danny the way he deserves to be known.

What Rafe_ doesn't_ know - what he's been trying to figure out for a while now - is how Danny can think that Rafe is leaving him behind. Admittedly, he'd never tell him that it is a volunteer mission, and that Danny could come too, because that's not what he wants. Sure, there's nothing better in the world than roaring off to a new adventure with your best buddy at your side, and Rafe knows he's gonna miss Danny even before he gets to England. Thing is, he made a promise to protect Danny, and as much as he wants to have his friend by his side, dragging him off to a war he doesn't believe in would make him the world's shittiest protector.

Danny doesn't believe in the war; doesn't believe that the Nazis are really evil and not just a group of misguided, manipulated people. Which, when you come down to it, is one of the biggest problems Rafe has with the whole idea. Your mom dies when you are three of some horrid illness, you dad becomes a staggering drunk whose idea of a good time is to beat you senseless and you still have some kind of faith that there's a benevolent side to everyone? Please. Rafe figures that some people are just born evil, and he's going to kick their asses before they can cross the ocean and get to the people he loves. Or, you know, at least attempt it.

The thing is, Rafe gets that Danny is scared. He really does. Rafe remembers the feel of his heart thudding when Evelyn cottoned on to his charade at the medical exam, and the feeling of hopelessness at the realization that Danny might go on and he would not. But Danny has got something Rafe hasn't. Danny has_ him_. Big brother, armed and ready, a force great enough to keep Danny safe and warm and happy, even if he doesn't realize how consciously Rafe's molded himself into a protector. Rafe's words ain't no rhetoric bullshit; anything that wants to get to Danny will have to get through him first, and if it does, he'll crawl out of the pits of Hell itself to save Danny. Doesn't matter if he's not within sight, 'cos he'll always be looking out for him.

So yeah, maybe that's the thing that's really bugging him about this whole "leaving me behind" bullshit; that he can know how Danny arranges his books and the motion he uses when writing and the way his overly-long fringe curtains his eyes, but not know when Danny lost his faith in Rafe to always have his back.

"One thing Rafe knew for sure; starving orphaned puppies had nothing on Danny when he had that look." LOL

"Anthony caught him doing it once and asked if Rafe thought he was Danny's mother and got flipped off for it, but Rafe knows in his heart that he is Danny's everything; mother, father, big brother and best friend." SO CUTE!

Now that I sound like an idiot for typing in caps, let me just say that this is the best Pearl Harbor fic I've read so far. The diction and characterization are spot on. The only mistake is that, at the very end, you have "toalways" whereas I'm pretty sure you meant "to always."

Thats about all I have. Stay amazing!! =D

~Aniuwolfe

Wow. I loved it.  
It's actually the best "Pearl Harbor"-fic I've ever read and it's so very in-character and sad and lovely that it breaks my heart a bit.  
My favourite part was "He has a catalogue of firsts - first flight, first fall, first crush, first Spelling Bee championship, first near-disastrous stunt, first disciplinary hearing and he cannot share them, because there is no one who could be trusted with such delicate knowledge" and the part that hurt most to read was: "he knows what Danny looks like in the throes of a nightmare and how he still twitches sometimes at the clinking sound of a belt buckle"

Just thought I'd let you know.


	3. Shadow of a Hero

_hey y'all!_

_since i refer to a number of manoeuvres in the text, i suppose i better briefly explain them._

_play chicken: any self-respecting fan of the movie ought to know this one. it's where two planes coming together from opposite directions turn sideways before collision so that their bellies face each other._

_leapfrog: think of it in terms of plane x and plane y. they fly in a row at the same altitude. plane y then flies up and plane x flies down slightly so that y is in front and x is behind. then x flies up and y flies down so that their positions are reversed. repeated, it becomes like a game of leapfrog._

_lateral leapfrog: instead of the planes flying one behind another, they are side by side. so when they fly up and down, it is to switch from left to right instead of back to front._

_hope you enjoy it :)_

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"_I thought you said you told her not to come."_

"_Yeah, I did."_

"_Why are you looking for her then?"_

"_It's my test. If I tell her not to come, and she comes anyway, then I know she loves me."_

That makes him smile a little, despite the sombre occasion. Rafe has a thing for testing people and boundaries; pushing them again and again to see how far they can bend without breaking. Sometimes it was simple things like the number of freshly baked Christmas cookies that could be stolen without reprimand and sometimes it was crazily dangerous things like testing how far a P-40 could be held in a nosedive before it spiralled out of control. Hare-brained as they were, Danny always finds himself more of a participant than an innocent bystander in these schemes; finds himself trying to brush cookie crumbs off his shirt and running an extra fifteen miles in full kit for being stupid enough to risk the safety of very expensive machinery.

As he watches his friend's receding back, Danny realises that the only difference between this test and every other before it is that he has finally been relegated to the position of bystander. Soon, he would lose even that; the ability to know exactly what Rafe was testing, the right to tell him when he was going too far and, when he pushed things too far anyway, the chance to help him get out of trouble.

"_Good hunting, Rafe,"_ he whispers, hoping that his brother would find what he was looking for.

They never really fit in where they came from, not if you looked past the superficiality of classmates and alliances on the football field; he was too introspective and Rafe too ambitious. Even when they were just kids, he always seemed to be chasing something. Maybe it was because of his inability to read, which he always made fun of but which Danny knew hurt him deeply, but he constantly pushed himself to be the best at everything he did, especially when it came to flying. At first he thought it was to earn Mr. MacCawley's confidence, so that he could fly the crop-duster at the unheard-of age of fourteen, but that only drove him to try and out-fly every pilot they knew. He thought that joining the force, where the planes were faster and there was competition enough even for a pilot of his calibre, would slake his thirst. Obviously, even that was not enough. He didn't mind that Rafe's path in life led him to bigger and greater things than he could hope to accomplish; Danny had known in his heart that this day would come a long time ago as he watched Rafe soar over the golden cornfields of Tennessee. No, he just hoped that his friend would find whatever it is he was looking for before he lost himself.

"_He told me you were a great flier. It was the same night he told me he'd volunteered to go to England."_

"_Volunteered? He…he told me he'd been assigned."_

Stupid, stupid son of a bitch. He knows immediately that she hadn't misheard him or perhaps misunderstood anything about the nature of his transfer to the Eagle Squadron; it is - no, was - so typical of Rafe that he wonders why the idea did not occurred to him sooner. Rafe was always looking out for him, even to his own detriment. Sometimes he chafed against the heavy-handed nature of Rafe's protective instincts, but he had grown to rely on it. It was his home, his shelter from a world that had shown him loss and grief far beyond his years. Whether it was the ever-extended invitation to dinner that saw him both properly fed and kept away from his abusive father to the smart-aleck comments that drew the brunt of their instructors' ire for stunts both pulled, he was always looking out for him. Rafe was the only constant in a world that kept changing and he had come to expect that nothing would happen to change that. Now, it just leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Maybe if he hadn't protested so hard against the transfer, Rafe might have let him in on it. If he had been more daring to attempt some of the more complex manoeuvres that Rafe had been trying to execute the week before, he would have proven himself worthy of being allowed to tag along. But it is too late now for ifs and maybes.

"_I always knew that no matter what trouble I got into, I'd never be in it alone."_

Never had a truer sentence been spoken. What most people never realise is that he was as much of a troublemaker as Rafe; he just isn't as loud or obvious about it. Take, for example, the time he convinced Rafe that there really was no harm in flying in the winter, only for them to get lost in a sudden storm. That they managed to land the planes relatively undamaged was a magnificent stroke of luck. Or that time they kidnapped the frogs from the school lab and 'released' them in Ms. Winter's classroom, where she was incidentally planning to give them a test the next day that he had completely forgotten to study for. Or the lateral leapfrogging stunt they tried out and nearly got court-martialled for. The only reason he dared to do those things and more besides was that Rafe was always game for it; all he ever needed was Rafe watching his back.

"_God, I miss him."_

"_Yeah, but don't you think he was up there the next day, cast and everything, telling me to make some adjustments on those wings."_

What he doesn't tell Evelyn was how he raged at Rafe for suggesting that. Oh no, it wasn't enough that he had nearly killed his best friend, here was a second go at it, natch. Mrs. MacCawley was so surprised at the sound of his raised voice that she had just stood by while he shouted himself hoarse. Rafe had been taken aback too, but only because he didn't think that what he had asked for was too dangerous. It was then that he realised that Rafe seemed to have a lower threshold for the recognition of danger; he had such confidence in the benevolence of life and his ability to get out of trouble that he often took risks no sane person would. This lack of sensitivity to danger only became more pronounced as he aged and more avenues for venting destructive energy opened up. He thought nothing of crossing the river that ran across the back of the MacCawley property on a rotting log or of nicking the truck keys for a joyride.

People seemed to think that it was a phase he would grow out of, but only Danny knew that this was more of a permanent deficiency; thus it fell to him to keep Rafe's near-suicidal tendencies in check, to make sure that he at least knew the risks of the things he got himself into. On the odd occasion, Rafe would actually listen and decide not to play chicken during the Commodore's visit or whatever it was that week. Danny didn't resent his role as the voice of reason, no more than he resented having to eat or breathe. It didn't take very long for them to realised that they had hit upon a winning formula because of this; with Rafe coveting something or rather and coming up with unworkable plans to get it, and him polishing those plans into success, there was very little that the two of them could not do.

"_I'm gonna be twenty-five. I might as well be an old man."_

When Danny was eleven, two things happened. Rafe caught a particularly nasty case of chickenpox. His English teacher lent him her dog-eared copy of The Wind in the Willows. He had no idea at the time that these two seemingly unrelated incidents would have an indelible impact on their lives. Being laid up with chickenpox wasn't exactly a party and his hyperactive friend quickly became cranky and restless. To help him while away the time, Danny read to him the adventures of Mr. Toad and his steadfast, ever patient friends. To him, it was little more than a heart-warming and well-told story. Rafe on the other hand identified with the mad amphibian, and became convinced that every life had a purpose. Mr. Toad's, despite his half-mad escapades in the beginning, was to unite the creatures of the river against the intruders from the Wild Wood, and his own purpose would surely be revealed to him one day.

Was it to fight the Huns? Die young? Truth be told, Rafe was more afraid of old age and insignificance than he ever was of death and had he been told at thirteen that this would be his fate, he would have laughed.

"_Danny, don't do this. Don't go on this mission. You got nothing to prove."_

"_You've been trying to protect me since we were kids."_

"_Yeah, well, you do tend to need it from time to time."_

It is all painfully familiar, but he can't help thinking that they had changed too much to ever look at things the same way again. Rafe would always look out for him and he would always look to him for guidance because they don't know how to do things any differently, but they had learnt to survive without each other and that knowledge is the elephant in the room now.

People who know them see, at the most, friends closer than blood brothers, but there is so much more to them than that. Rafe, for all of his cantankerousness and supposed lack of sense and responsibility, had taken on the role of a parent from the tender age of five. If anyone taught him to tell the difference between right and wrong, made sure he was fed and clothed and loved, it was Rafe. When his father died and he moved in with the MacCawleys, it was like finally buying a house that he'd been renting for the past couple of years. Looking at Rafe now, where he sits in the sand with a haunted expression on his face and dark circles under his eyes, Danny realises that he is not the only one who lost a part of his childhood; only Rafe had given it up willingly, and Danny wonders why he did it. Rafe was always the first to try out whatever stunt he wanted them to attempt. He took the fall for their collective mischief. It was selfless, purely and truly so; self-sacrifice at its most muted and most noble, kind that only heroes were capable of.

"_There's Jap patrols everywhere! Danny, land somewhere else!"_

The mission is all kinds of fucked-up. Nothing had gone according to plan, not the take-off, the bombing run itself, the landing but one thing never changes; Rafe was watching his back the whole time. And now, even as he is heading towards certain doom, he is still trying to protect him. Danny smiles at the thought, and keeos the bomber on course for the coast; if his friend thinks that he is just going to leave him to die like that, he is sorely mistaken. Rafe had taught him better than that.

XXXXX

_DO hit the review button and tell me what you think. Danny is always so damn difficult to write for and i'd really appreciate any feedback on the matter._


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